My ebooks and audiobooks (from @torbooks, @HoZ_Books, @mcsweeneys, @beaconPressBks et al) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."
* Regulating the Online Public Sphere (@ColumbiaGFoE)
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Happy #SpookySeason! My picture book "Poesy the Monster Slayer" is the perfect read for your little monsters: it's an epic tale of bedtime-refusal, toy-hacking and monster-hunting, illustrated by @McRockefeller.
If you're a @Medium subscriber, you can read these essays - as well as previews of upcoming magazine columns and early exclusives on doctorow.medium.com.
My latest Medium column is "Bankruptcy protects fake people, brutalizes real ones"
If you prefer a newsletter, subscribe to the plura-list, which is also ad- and tracker-free, and is utterly unadorned save a single daily emoji. Today's is "🏚". Suggestions solicited for future emojis!
There's a truly comforting sociopathy snuggled inside capitalism ideology: if markets are systems for identifying and rewarding virtue, ability and value, then anyone who's failing in the system is actually *unworthy*, not unlucky.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on , my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
That means the winners are not just lucky (and certainly not merely selfish), but actually *the best* and they owe nothing to their social inferiors apart from what their own charitable impulses dictate.
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The problem with good news in the real world is that it's *messy*. Neat happy endings are for novels, not the real world, and that goes double for the climate emergency.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on , my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Let's take a sec here and notice something *genuinely great* happening in the US government: the @CFPB's stunning, unbroken streak of *major*, muscular victories over the forces of corporate corruption.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on , my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Look, no one wants to kick Big Tech to the curb more than I do, but, also: it's *good* that Google indexes the news so people can find it, and it's *good* that Facebook provides forums where people can talk about the news.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on , my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
It's not news if you can't find it. It's not news if you can't talk about it. We don't call information you can't find or discuss "news" - we call it "secrets."
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Noted anti-capitalist agitator Adam Smith had it right: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on , my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Despite being a raving commie loon, Smith's observation was so undeniably true that regulators, policymakers, and economists couldn't help but acknowledge that it was true.
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